LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR AND BOARD CHAIR
Dear SVP Community:
“When the going gets tough …” Well, that’s too trite. How about: “The ultimate measure of a human is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)”?
We live in extraordinary times: we face the greatest economic challenges of our lifetime (our grandparents’ stories about the Great Depression suddenly don’t seem so foreign); America elected its first African American president, a remarkable milestone regardless of your political beliefs; and it has never been more imperative to truly, collaboratively face up to the world’s fundamental social issues like education reform, health care, poverty at home and in the developing world, and so forth.
Social Venture Partners is unquestionably just one small dot on the map of organizations and leaders working to help change the world. But if we steadfastly maintain our values of respect and humility, the vision we defined for ourselves in 2007 is one that we can aspire to with growing urgency and clarity – SVP will become the highest-impact way for an individual to effect positive social change, in the Puget Sound and beyond.
How is it possible in these “tough times” to continue to hold such an aspiration? One reason is because we have to; we simply must. More concretely, it’s because our vision is grounded in our work, impact and experiences from our first 10 years. We know that we have:
- Granted more than $10 million and given more than 25,000 hours of strategic volunteer time to help strengthen local nonprofits.
- Developed one of the most effective and high-impact models of philanthropy development in the world.
- Expanded to 25 cities in the U.S., Canada, Japan and, very soon, Singapore.
- Worked with and learned from nonprofits that profoundly improve early childhood development, education, out of school time programs for youth, and the environment.
- Watched dozens of our Partners become civic and philanthropic leaders.
These accomplishments are the product of a community of individuals and organizations that came together to pool and leverage resources, to learn from each other, and to create a world in which every child has the opportunity for success in a healthy environment. It is this network – harnessed for collective impact – that makes our aspirations achievable.
In this report, you have read about the people that make it all possible. And make SVP what it uniquely is. In following sections, we share a bit more about where we are today and where we are going tomorrow.
Thank you.
Paul Shoemaker, Executive Director Lisa Chin, Board Chair